My mother’s stories
chapter 12
My mother's triuphs and mishaps in Bashkiria
(the ending)
So it was not astonishing that some of my mother’s things disappeared from
time to time. Once, for instance, even pretty buttons on her blouse were neatly
cut off. And it was not a very big surprise for her when she discovered it was
not one of her suitors, as it was thought at first, but her two cousins, who maliciously
continued to steal her photographs from the board of honour. Nevertheless, my
mother was not inclined to leave her uncle’s house till her cousins resorted to
real violence. It was my mother’s diary, I think, that roused them to this
cruelty. They took it in secret and, as their reading and writing skills were
rather limited, most likely asked one of their friends to read it. I can
imagine how it would have intensified their humiliation if some outsider had
read aloud my mother’s picturesque description of their own stupidity and lack
of success among the boys.
Although there was, I think, another reason to redouble those girls’
hostility. My mother didn’t drink alcohol and in our country such weirdoes have
always been strongly disapproved of by those for whom drinking is part of their
culture. The refusal to drink together without good reasons has always been
taken as a sign of disrespect or arrogance. Sometimes, it seems, drinkers and
non-drinkers belong to different species. I remember my relief when I
discovered that none of my fellow students watched attentively how much I
drank. There were some jokes about it, of course, but they recognized my right
to drink as little as I wanted.
Surely my mother’s cousins weren’t so tolerant. They were simple,
uneducated, plain girls without any noticeable talents to distinguish them
among the crowd, except that one of them was a kleptomaniac and another had
squint and epilepsy. I understand they could feel ill-fated and hold a grudge
against the whole world. Nevertheless, as much as I try, I can’t find an excuse
for those girls’ actions.
I don’t know exactly what brought the tense relationship between my
mother and her cousins to the breaking point. Maybe it was an argument because
of the stolen diary or just her usual refusal to drink with them. Anyway, once
when their parents weren’t at home those two harpies attacked my mother and
poured the whole bottle of French brandy down her throat. Then they hurled her
down on the sofa and were standing nearby, watching her and laughing their
heads off. My mother told me she couldn’t stir a limb and only her tongue was
moving. So she was lying motionless on the sofa telling her laughing cousins
how stupid they were and promising to win their suitors away as soon as they
had at least one. I believe her cousins did spill at least half of the bottle,
because my mother was able to get up early in the morning. She packed her
things, then burnt her diary and left her uncle’s house forever.
One friendly woman, who lived in the neighbourhood, sheltered my mother
in her house. When her two sobered cousins came looking for her the woman said
she was not there. Then her uncle came begging her to come back and promising
on oath to punish his daughters. My mother refused point blank. Some time later
she got a place in the dormitory. Maybe at that time she decided once and for
all not to have any affairs with her relatives.
Years later, however, my mother always remembered Bushkiria with warm
feelings. Despite all those troubles her uncle had always been kind to her, she
was young and at the height of her beauty, surrounded by suitors, who always sought
an opportunity to dance with her. Moreover, she successfully learnt the craft
of technical drawing and was praised by her boss.
By the end of the year that she had spent in Bushkiria she received a
letter written by an unfamiliar hand from her mother’s dictation. Her mother
was discharged from prison at last and asked her daughter to come back, telling
her how happily they would live together.
“Can you believe it?” my mother used to ask me with indignation. “She
thought I would be working hard for her as I used to! And she would be combing
her long black plait, reading newspapers by syllables for hours or having fun
with her lovers. So I wrote to her I would rather die under the bridge. As for
living happily together I reminded her that leather belt that hung on the nail
near the entrance door, which she had used so often on me”.
To be continued…
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